


Zero One/ One Zero

by gretazreta (Greta)



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2746568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greta/pseuds/gretazreta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen's the best navigator in the Zone: a “flyer” who works with a small crew  hacking virtual security systems.  It's exciting, profitable, and not entirely legal. When one of his team gets lost on-grid, Jensen teams up with Jared, a “breaker”, who's convinced that there's more to the latest rash of Zone fatalities than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero One/ One Zero

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cybertown](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/87011) by Deanna Wesson. 



> This was written for spn_reversebang in 2011. Thanks so much to deanna_wesson, who made the inspiring artwork, for her almost infinite patience and also such a strong and beautiful prompt. Certainly this story could never have been written without you! Thanks to the mods of spn for their kindness and understanding, and also for modding a really successful and interesting challenge. Thanks to Sophie for giving this a last-minute beta. All mistakes subsequently are my own.

[](http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/gretainabag/?action=view&current=CyberTown1.jpg)

Beth Zones out on the fifth day of February, on a day when the sleet is skittering against the windows of  
their tiny office; on the nineteenth floor of the Rose-Heinz building on the corner of Twenty-seventh and Fifty-eighth; in the ninetieth Prefecture. The temperature outside is forty-six degrees.

Afterwards, Jensen searches through the numbers in search of a reason, but he knows that it's pointless. Numbers are different outside the Zone. So are faces, so are people. Everything off-grid is much harder to understand.

It goes down like this:

It's their last journey in of a highly successful day. Chris is keen to send them in one more time, and Jensen's high on the Zone, on this day when he and Beth have skipped around a dozen providers, through Eurasia and round the Pacific Rim, skimming funds here and there like invisible dancers. He's the master of all he surveys. In the Zone, he's free. The whitebright sky is the only fence keeping him in. He's a god.

Beth rolls her eyes at him before Chris jacks her in, and then her eyes close. Chris touches her hair with tenderness, and turns to see to Jensen. They're the perfect team, the way Jensen sees it. He's the navigator, Beth's the breaker, and Chris is the tracker, the one who will bring them home. 

Chris sends him inZone, and Beth's there waiting. On grid, they fly together over the translucent landscape; the vectors hum in color; it's a beautiful day. They dawdle, for the sheer euphoric pleasure of it, before Jensen locks on to a location, and they land. 

It's not even a multi-national. It's just some little local bank, a ma-and-pa kind of deal - but obviously someone knew someone who knew someone, because the firewall's one of the most impressive Jensen's seen. He's been in this game long enough to have seen just about everything the Zone's mechdesigners have to throw at people like him. He once saw Mitsubishi Global Conglomerate's Megalith, even though he wasn't the navigator, back then, just some wide-eyed kid watching his mentor melt his brain some summer afternoon in Chicago. This doesn't have that sort of firepower, or anything like it.

He feels a shiver of something, though, when he sees it, a cold line of ice down his spine, and he turns to Beth and raises a hand to his lips. She grins at him. It's not a day for caution. They're unstoppable.

The gateway opens on a hall of mirrors, his own self – or his avatar, at least – reflected back at him a millionfold. There's a bad lurch of consciousness, strange tilt of perception, and he sees himself from a dozen different angles. Blue hair spiked high, lean body, a couple of inches taller than he is off-grid but otherwise a fair representation. It's not common practice or even remotely wise to resemble your living self online, but Jensen's crew all do, for the reason that no one in authority is going to come looking for hackers who look like their 'tars. Identity is no longer about what you're born looking like, even in the Real. Their only disguise is no disguise at all. He thinks, in the weird swirl of images, that that's maybe what saves him.

He knows who he is. He recognizes the illusion for what it is. 

Beth's not so lucky. 

She stops stock still, then moves her arm, cautiously, up and down, a puppet discovering and testing the limits of her strings. She reaches forward and touches the surface of the mirror, curious, careless. She knows better than that. They both do.

“Beth,” he yells, but it's too late. It's like she dips her fingers into an oil-slick sea. It coats her hand in a shining silver that spreads up her arm, across her body, into the gape of her scream. She flickers and her avatar dissolves before his eyes, falls into nothing, a thousand liquid shards of metal, atoms of bright dust shed on the windless air of the Zone.

He jacks out; she doesn't. Across in the other bunk in their equipment room, Beth's still as a corpse, face turned towards the wall. Chris is shaking her, calling her name, but she's not there. She's nowhere. She's gone.

Jensen leans over and falls off the bed, hugged by the unwelcome return of sluggish gravity, and he hates his body, hates it more now than ever. He kneels beside Beth's bed, and watches Chris shake her, watches Chris hug Beth to him like some forlorn rag-doll. Her eyes open and she stares over Chris' shoulder, at nothing. 

“What did you do?” Chris hisses at him.

Jensen sits there on the floor, silent, and watches mutely as Chris injects Beth - Jensen knows the deal, aminotrophen, amadex, dextrororatary methamphetamine, all in an effort to shock her brain into life. Jensen knows, somehow, that this isn't going to work. Beth's gone somewhere they can't reach her. 

“I didn't do anything,” he whispers, but he knows it's not about what he did, it's about what he missed. It's about how he led Beth carelessly into the most sophisticated and deadly firewall he's ever encountered. It's about how Jensen didn't see the signs, didn't trust his gut. 

Chris buries his face in Beth's hair, and Jensen curls himself up, wraps his arms around his knees, looks out into the neon-lit night so he doesn't have to hear Chris weeping.

After a while, Jensen taps into his receiver and calls an ambulance.

**

Xenophile is cranking. The music's loud, and the dance-floor is packed. Jensen hasn't slept, and the lights hurt his eyes. 

Jensen's worked in the Zone too long, where the 'tars tend toward slender elegance: the presence of so many bodies jammed together - sweaty and odorous and pushy - disorients him. He puts his head down and makes his way to the bar. Three-quarters of the way there, a guy nudges against him, and Jensen feels it all the way through his body, the jarring heaviness of touch, the sluggish blur of gravity dragging him down. It's nauseating.

He moves on, keeping as far to the perimeter of the dance-floor as he can. This had better be worth it. 

“Jensen,” the bartender – Tim, his name is Tim - acknowledges, and pours him a drink without asking. It's his usual, Alpine on ice, and he slips onto a barstool and savors the taste of mountain water, the sting of juniper.

“On the house,” Tim says.“I heard about Beth. I'm sorry.”

Jensen slams the drink, feels it ice-cold in his chest, and slides his glass over for another.

“Seems that your business is getting more dangerous, lately,” Tim says. “Time was, I'd heard of maybe one or two fatal Zone-outs. I thought they were an urban myth. There's been three in the last week alone. Beth, and Tom Hicks, and that little guy with the red hair, the one with the stutter.”

Jensen feels himself grow cold. 

“Ronald Cheevers,” he says. “I flew with Ronnie once.” Ronnie had been wildly overconfident, and Jensen hadn't travelled inZone with him again. Ronnie was good. Not as good as Beth, but good, really good.

Tim shrugs.

“Ever thought about a retirement plan?” he asks, and Jensen doesn't say anything. Of course he hasn't. He's never met a flyer who'd contemplated any other life, and if the barman was a flyer – or even a tracker – he'd know not to ask. 

He looks up, and Tim meets his eyes. He's cute in a way, but Jensen could never go for a guy who didn't fly. It'd be like dating a schnauzer, or something. A whole different species. Even if Jensen dated. He tends not to, these days. 

“Pity,” Tim says, and Jensen's not entirely sure he's just talking about Jensen's job.

Jensen shrugs.

“I was looking for someone,” he begins and Tim indicates with his chin towards the corner booth.

“Jared whatshisname,” Tim says, “he's here already.”

Jensen looks over, but can only see the back of a head. Longish hair. Tall. 

“We might need a bottle,” Jensen says, and Tim hands it over.

**

He slides into the booth, puts the Alpine on the table, and clinks two glasses next to it.

Jared Padalecki is not what he expected. He looks up, and grins, wide and generous, and Jensen finds himself frowning in response, without even thinking about it. No one smiles like that, not in this city. 

“I wanted to meet you in the Real,” Jared begins.

Jensen studies him. His nose tilts up. Jensen thinks Jared could get it fixed, if he wanted, the kind of credit he's probably making. It's interesting that he chooses not to. As if there's something in his Real self worth preserving. 

“How very... analogue... of you,” Jensen replies, after a moment. He sees the logic: the Zone is seductive, manipulable, aesthetic, and in some ways inherently untrustworthy. But then, so's the Real.

“I guess I believe you can tell a lot looking a guy in the eyes,” Jared says, unfazed by the criticism. 

If Jensen had met Jared in the Zone, he wouldn't have believed in him.

Jared's eyes are long, cat-like, a shade of bottle green that Jensen thinks is probably un-augmented. He's tall for Real and broad-shouldered, and really fucking pretty. It doesn't matter. What really matters is how he flies. Jensen will be able to tell everything he needs to know from that. Meeting in the Real is utterly redundant.

He needs someone to fly with, if he's ever going to figure out what happened to Beth.

“My partner Zoned out this week,” Jensen says. “She might recover enough to know her own name, but she'll never fly again. Or at least, not with me.”

Jared takes a sip of his drink. “That's rough,” he comments.

It's more than rough. Beth's his friend, his partner, part of his _team_. He remembers the first time they flew together, the delicate beauty of her 'tar, the elegance of her presence, the sharp whip of her intelligence. He remembers the way she dismantled their first firewall, like a lover pulling a lacing from a corset. They woke, afterwards, facing each other on the flat couches, and she smiled a secret smile and Jensen knew it was for keeps. 

“How was it,” Chris had asked, as always a little jealous of the two of them, and there had been no words. There still aren't.

“I'm the navigator,” Jensen says, hearing how brittle his own voice sounds. “She's right not to risk that again.”

There's a silence. He drinks more, and refills his glass. Everything hurts in the Real, the light, the sounds, the processes of his body, breath/digestion/kinesis. Emotion. 

“Tell me about the wall,” Jared offers. 

“It was like a mountain of glass,” Jensen says, after a moment. “Like the Chikamatsu building, made out of mirror. And behind me, I could see...” he trails off. “I saw myself. Lots of them. Lots of me. And I didn't know which was me.” Hard to describe the sensation of his mind leaping, trying to engage itself, trying to find its way home again.

“And your partner?” Jared asks. 

Jensen swallows. Stupid not to be prepared to talk about it so directly. If Jared were any kind of breaker, he was always going to ask. 

“Beth touched it – no, she reached into it. Or it reached into her. She became a mirror, and she broke.”

Jensen downs his Alpine. He wishes he was in the Zone, that he could dissolve himself, fly away into the ether, out the door, over the city. He wishes he wasn't tied to his body. Gravity makes him feel lumpen and disjointed. Gravity makes him feel old. 

He's brought back to himself by a touch on his hand, and it's Jared's hand, over his, warm squeeze of comfort, and Jensen pulls his hand away. That's so out-of-bounds, such a profound break with protocol that Jensen can't even speak, just stares across the table at Jared, whose head is tilted slightly to one side. 

“Don't,” Jensen says. “Just... don't.”

He rubs his hands together, under the table, as if he could wash away the unwanted contact. He's cold, suddenly. This was a bad idea. He's not ready for a new partner. 

“You want to fly with me,” Jared says, and Jensen's not so sure.

“I heard you were the best,” Jensen says. It comes out aggressive and rude, and Jensen doesn't care.

“The best you could expect, at least,” Jared replies.

Jensen opens his mouth to argue, and closes it again. Jared's probably right. 

“You're this close to burned-out,” Jared says. “Jumpy as a cat. Your last partner fried her brain, and you're pretty sure it's your fault. Why on earth would I want to fly with you?”

Jensen cradles his hand under the table and juts out his chin.

“I'm fine in the Zone,” he says. “It's the Real I sometimes have difficulties with.” 

And if that's an understatement, he doesn't think it really matters. The Real is unimportant. He's a flyer. 

“I've got to find the fucker who built that firewall,” he says, choosing words carefully. “Beth is... she _was_ a good person. She was the best flyer I ever saw. She loved it. She worked hard but more than that, she loved it. She was an artist.”

“She was a criminal,” Jared points out.

“It's the same thing,” Jensen says.

Jared thinks about it, and angles his head in a nod that Jensen reads as concession. 

“To be honest, I don't even know if I want another partner,” Jensen says. “But I'm not a breaker, not really. I can take you anywhere you want to go, that's my thing, and I'm good at it. But the rest... that would be up to you.”

Jared nods. He watches Jensen, and Jensen thinks he knows that out of sight under the table, Jensen's still cradling his hand, trying to wish the touch away. Jared wanted to meet him in the Real to see what sort of person Jensen is, and Jensen's only spoken the truth. The Real isn't his element. He doesn't fit here, and he never really has. 

“Please,” he says. “Please give me the chance to prove it to you. I need a partner. I need to find out what happened to Beth. I wouldn't ask you, but...” He shrugs. He's at the end of his tether. If he doesn't get in-Zone quickly, he's going to crack up.

Jared thinks about it, and nods slowly.

“Okay,” he says. “We'll give it a try.”

**

As usual, the first second after jacking in is nightmarish, white crackle of overstimulation, vertigo, like he's falling backwards into his own head, and then the sickening lurch as normality reasserts itself, as the physics of the Zone align in his brain. They're standing on a virtual street, slick with rain water, dark with night and bright with neon. It could be real, but it's not, it's beautifully rendered but there's a slight pixellation on the edge of his vision. 

He turns his head, and Jared is standing there, waiting: the fucker's adapted quicker than Jensen, calibrated himself, and he's ready to go. His 'tar is impeccable, sharply defined, clear. Jensen's not surprised: Jared's like that in the Real, as well, as though he's more _there_ than other people, more vibrant and alive. 

“Let's see it,” Jared says, and they're flying together, through the grid of the Zone. 

Jensen takes the long way round; routing between servers; a waterfall of connections and bypasses; the ecstasy of travel; every dimension a multifaceted construct made to be broken. Jared's right there with him. That's good: Jensen didn't want to lose him, not really. 

He's aware he's showing off, just a little, because he's good at this, he's the best, and he wants to impress Jared. But Jared keeps up, and Jensen feels stretched, extended beyond himself – he's flying better than he ever has. 

He's never known this kind of elegant pairing, not so soon, not so easily, not even with Beth. 

Beth. The thought of her pale staring face makes him cut the journey short. 

He alights at the co-ordinates of Oakland Prudential, where he lost her, and waits only a second before Jared arrives next to him. 

"Not bad," Jared says, but Jensen can see the gleam in Jared's eyes that tells him Jared's flown better today than he expected as well. 

"You know it," Jensen says, and turns away. "Watch your step," he calls over his shoulder. "Beth was the best." 

He reaches out his hand and pushes the door aside. He steps inside the firewall, lets it take him, and there's the strange uncoiling sensation in his stomach, and then he's standing in the bank's vault. 

Only he isn't. Jared emerges next to him, and looks around, clearly baffled. 

"I don't understand," he says.

Jensen is frozen in place.

"It was different," he says.

Jared takes a couple of steps forward, but nothing happens. Jensen can't move. It's like an entirely different place, and he checks his co-ordinates once again. Jared walks over to the credit centre, types on the interface, and watches as his chip transacts. 

"A hundred kay, just like that," he says, and looks at Jensen. "You didn't have to make that shit up about your partner. With your reputation, I would have flown with you regardless." 

Jensen's staring at their surroundings. There's absolutely nothing there that is wrong or out of place.

"I didn't lie about it," he answers, coolly. "I wouldn't, not about Beth." Jensen doesn't lie. There's no point if there's no one you're trying to impress.

He takes a step back, skips a few random connections and unjacks. His eyes open and Chris is standing at the console, monitoring Jared.

"Success, then," Chris says, without emotion. “You found your way back there.”

"I don't think so," Jensen answers, and watches as Jared jacks out, as his eyes flicker open and he comes back into himself.

"Well?" Chris asks, and Jared shrugs, sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. 

"Nothing," Jared says. "Whatever it was, it's gone. We skimmed a hundred kay, easy as pie.”

Chris looks at Jensen, and his eyes are cold. He blames Jensen, and Jensen can't fault the logic. But he knows he wasn't negligent. He knows he flew to the same place today.

"It wasn't my fault," Jensen says. "I swear. It was different. Something changed it.”

"You think that makes a difference to Beth?" Chris asks. "You think that makes a difference to me?" 

He switches the platform off, and Jensen listens as the familiar high-pitched whine as it powers down. Chris doesn't look at him anymore, just packs his stuff away slowly and methodically. 

"Don't go," Jensen says. "I'm sorry. I'll go in again. Now, I'll do it now."

"I thought I could do this," Chris says. "But I can't. I'm sorry." 

They've worked together since they were stupid teenagers hacking into the newly linked Ameri-Zone, nearly fifteen years ago. They've seen a lot of trouble together. Jensen thought they'd always be a team. 

But then Chris Zoned a little in Japan, out for a couple of weeks at first, but the whole thing had lost its charm a little, so they found Beth to fly with Jensen, with Chris on the ground, and Chris and Beth fell in love, and they were a family of sorts for awhile, a haphazard family, surfing both sides of the law, for three good years. And now Beth's gone, or as good as, and Chris can't even look Jensen in the face. 

"I'll find out what happened," Jensen says softly. "I'll find out. I'll prove it to you." 

Chris turns to him once by the door. "It doesn't matter," he says, quietly, and leaves. Jensen's left sitting on the bed, the jack loose in his fist. There's a sound of movement, and he whips around. He'd forgotten Jared, for a moment. 

"Sounds like we're going to have to find another tracker," Jared says, and Jensen just stares at him. 

"We?" Jensen asks. 

"Sure," Jared says. "If we're going to find out who murdered your girl, and covered it up again, we're going to need a tracker."

“You believe me,” Jensen says.

“I just flew with you,” Jared says. “You're good. You're very good. Elegant, but not careless. There's no way you ditched your girl in there. You knew where I was the whole time. You knew where we were, together. You're like one of those old-school birds with the magnets in their ears.”

“A homing pigeon,” Jensen whispers. He turns away for a moment - matter how in control he is in the Zone, off-grid his face inevitably gives him away. He's relieved beyond measure that Jared trusts him. That he's not entirely alone in this. Maybe Chris will come round, later. He hopes so. 

“That bank had no firewall to speak of,” Jared says. “In any case, for the amount of credit they've got stored, it would have been redundant. It's just a cover.”

“For another bank,” Jensen says.

“Or for something else,” Jared says. 

**  
Chris blocks his calls. He knows Chris has lost faith in him, blames him for not protecting Beth better. Chris doesn't even want to see him, right now, maybe ever. But Jensen's got an urgency in his gut. He has to find out. He has to _know_. And if Chris won't help him, he's going to have to find someone who will.

It's not easy to find a new tracker. The good ones are all in teams. The bad ones are worse than useless. Jared says he knows a guy who knows a guy, but Jensen's antsy about trusting his Real self with just anybody. It feels wrong, anyway, to go in without Chris tracking behind them. He's never flown without Chris there, in some guise or another.

He leaves Jared to meet the new guy on his own, and takes the trolley out of town. It's raining, a thin pitiful wash of water, the sky overcast like an in-Zone whiteout. There's a cold wind that gets in the back of his neck, and makes him shiver and pull his coat closer. February is awful. 

At the hospital, the nurse glares at him from behind the desk. 

“Visiting hours are nearly over,” she says, and Jensen just stands there. He knows what she sees, why she disapproves of him. He's got flyer written all over him. He's thin, and pale, and inked and leathered. He doesn't fit in here, not at all, he's the antithesis of the white walls, the hushed silence, the efficient nurses walking past in rubber-soled shoes.

“I'm here to see Beth,” he says. “Beth Riesgraf.” He knows the nurse would stop him visiting if she could, but she can't. He's doing nothing wrong. He's done nothing wrong. 

“She's in the private wing,” the nurse says, and Jensen nods. He knows: he and Chris are paying for it. They're the closest to next-of-kin that Beth's got, and they've earned the credits over the years to be able to afford it.

He hears Chris before he sees him. He would recognize that low voice anywhere, soft husky singing, like a lullaby.

_I just can't get the hang of hanging on  
Every time I try to grab it, the will is gone._

Jensen rounds the corner into the room, and stills. 

The room's all white, crisp lines, with bright fluorescents overhead, like a pleasure hotel in one of the Southern European zones. Beth's sitting in a wheelchair, looking out the window, and Chris is kneeling beside her, holding her hand, singing just to her.

_When she looks into my eyes  
She sees a man she used to recognize._

Jensen watches as Chris touches Beth's hair, strokes her face, and talks to her quietly. He watches as Beth keeps gazing out the window, as if Chris weren't there, as if she herself is somewhere else entirely. She's nowhere, Jensen thinks. She got lost in the Zone - somewhere that's not real. It's his fault. He's the navigator, he's the one who always knows where he is. He doesn't, here, he's in freefall and he doesn't know what to do to make things right. He hates the feeling. He hates the Real. 

He leaves them without saying hello.

The door to the doctor's office is ajar. The short man inside is standing next to an ancient metal filing cabinet.

“I didn't think people made those things any more,” Jensen comments, and the man whirls around, his arms full of paper folders.

“They don't,” he says, putting the files down carefully on his desk. “But people in your line of work should appreciate them more than most.”

Jensen looks down at himself. 

“You're a flyer,” the doctor says. “If I kept these records on my computer, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be here in my office to ask me about your friend. You'd be creeping in via the Zone, and you'd already know about her and everyone else in this place, what my bank balance is, where I'm planning to vacation, which pornographic sites I prefer, what I ordered for lunch.”

Jensen doesn't deny it. He preferred to ask, but if he'd had no success, he'd have hacked in here in a matter of minutes. 

“So, I keep my information in paper form,” the doctor says. He holds out his hand. “I'm Robert Stevens.”

Jensen doesn't shake hands. “Pleased to meet you, Dr Stevens,” he says politely. “I was wondering how Beth's doing.”

“You're listed as her next of kin,” Dr Stevens notes. “Mr Ackles, isn't it? Mr Kane is Beth's fiance, in the other room. He's spent every hour here with her for the last couple of days.”

Jensen chooses to ignore the implied criticism. It's the first time he's visited. He's been busy trying to make this right. “What's her prognosis?”

The doctor rifles through files, and opens one, and Jensen studies the man's face as he runs a finger down a line of figures.

“It's a surprisingly common phenomenon,” Dr Stevens says. “Increasingly common, lately. She's the third this week. You call it 'zoning out,' I understand. Medically, it's known as Acute Virtual Exstasia, but no one really knows the cause.”

Jensen sits in the chair across from the doctor's desk. “A journey went wrong,” Jensen says. “I was navigator. I'm the one that lost her.”

The doctor nods his head.

“You're the one who decides where to go.”

Jensen nods – it's an over-simple way of phrasing it, but that's more or less it.

“And her job?”

“Beth was a breaker,” Jensen says. “Is a breaker. Her speciality is negotiating security systems.”

“Illegally,” Dr Stevens says. He sits behind his desk, and puts his hands behind his head. Jensen stares at him. 

“It's expected,” Jensen says. “In a way, it's a service. We test the limits of the security and take a fee for it. We don't take much. It's not like theft.”

“It sounds exactly like theft,” Dr Stevens notes.

Jensen leans forward, rests his hands on his knees. 

“Well, our theft is paying your check. So, call the cops, or tell me how soon my friend is going to be herself again.” 

There's a long moment of pause, and Dr Stevens studies Jensen.

“I don't know if you people understand the gravity of this situation,” the doctor says. “Again and again. The same symptoms. Beth's not brain-dead, she's not comatose. You habitually travel out of yourselves as if your minds and bodies weren't inherently interconnected. This time, your friend failed to come back to herself.

“The Sioux used to call it spirit-walking: sending the consciousness beyond the body. But they did it for spiritual reasons, to be closer to nature. Your generation just does it for greed.”

It's more than that, but Jensen can't explain the beauty of the Zone to someone who hasn't been there, hasn't seen the elegant structures of data, the endless curved horizon of information, who hasn't felt the sense of control which comes with negotiating a virtual environment. Certainly he's got no chance of explaining it to someone who seemingly doesn't even use a computer, who keeps his patients records in a dusty old metal box in the corner of his office.

“There was a firewall,” Jensen tries to explain. “A defensive device – a virtual defensive device – to prevent intruders accessing the information. But that happens all the time. It's the rule, not the exception. But most times...”

“Most times you know the way through,” Dr Stevens suggests.

“Most times I know the way through, or there IS no way through,” Jensen says. “Most times if you fail, there's no repercussion, you just stop and go home. Or the firewall is more like an impassable sort of maze. Someone who knows the code can skip right through it, but if you don't know it and can't crack it... you leave your sigil and you go.”

“Empty-handed,” the doctor says.

Jensen doesn't feel guilty about that. He nods. 

“That last time, with Beth, the firewall was...” he stops. “It was wrong. It didn't seem to exist to prevent us, it was there to hurt us. To kill us.”

“To send a message,” the doctor says. 

Jensen shrugs. “Perhaps. Word gets around, I suppose. But you don't make something like that for security's sake. Because word gets around that there's something really fatal there, some jerk's going to want to break it. It's like a magnet for people like us.”

“A challenge,” Dr Stevens says.

“Like knights hearing about a monster,” Jensen says. “We won't stay away. We'll do exactly the reverse.”

“I've had twelve instances in the last month of A.V.E.” Dr Stevens says, watching Jensen's face carefully. “Twelve young people. The brightest minds of your generation, some of them. That's what bright kids do, these days. You don't go to medical school, or to college, or join the Peace Corp. You become hackers, you don't produce, you don't fix, you just steal.”

Jensen raises an eyebrow. “I'm not the brightest mind of my generation, and my trust-fund didn't stretch to finishing high-school, let alone college.” He's tired of the old man's assumptions.

“Your friend won't talk again,” Dr Stevens says, voice harsh. Jensen flinches, despite himself. “It's unlikely she'll walk again, that she'll be able to take any more than the most basic care of her own needs. Do you understand me? The same is true of the rest. A dozen. In this prefecture. That's not even the whole city. Not even the whole _state_.”

Jensen looks at the hole in the knee of his jeans, and runs a thumb over the threads hanging down.

“Your game has changed,” Dr Stevens says, more quietly. “You're not Robin Hood anymore, skimming off credit that no one misses. There's something out there. In there. However you wish to phrase it. What happened to Beth wasn't bad luck. It wasn't a lack of skill on her part, nor, I believe, on yours. Someone wants you dead. And all the others like you.” 

Jensen sits there, biting his lip. He hears what the doctor is saying. But there's an itch under his skin. He's been out of the Zone now for more than three days, and he hears the risks, hell, he's seen what can happen in there, but it doesn't make any difference at all. He wants it, the freedom of it, no matter what. Part of the reason is that he wants to find the person who hurt Beth. Get revenge. But part of it is that he just can't help himself.

Dr Stevens studies him. “Don't you think there's something fundamentally wrong when you can't live your life in reality? When you have to escape into a virtual world?”

“What's so great about this world?” Jensen asks, defensively. “People die on the streets every day, because they're hungry, or drug-addicted, because there's not enough work to pay for them to feed their families. Rich people get richer. Poor people die a slow death.”

“There was a time when young people saw the problems of the world as a reason to change it, not to run from it,” Dr Stevens says. 

“They didn't make it any better,” Jensen says. “All their efforts and the world is still in a heap of shit.”

Dr Stevens sits back, defeated. 

Jensen doesn't smile at him, makes no move to speak again. 

“Does she have any chance?” he asks, when the weight of the silence becomes too much.

“She might find her way back,” Dr Stevens says. 

Jensen doesn't believe him.

“I liked you better when you were being an asshole,” he replies, and leaves.

 

**

He makes his way home, through sheeting rain. The city stinks of biofuel and rotten garbage, and at least two people brush against him, sending shivers right to the core of him. He's had enough of this hellhole. He doesn't care what the doctor says. The Real is overrated. He buys alcohol, going for quantity rather than quality. It's going to be a hard night.

He showers, for as long as he can, til the water runs tepid, then icy cold. He dries himself, and dresses carefully, jeans, jacket, spiking up his hair, donning his gloves, as always, the last piece of his armor. 

He contemplates going out to eat. The chiller is empty but for frozen dinners, and he never orders in, as a matter of principle. He's not that hungry, anyway.

The knock at the door startles him more than he cares to admit. He's worked hard to keep his place a secret. From everyone, even from Beth and Chris. It's _his_. He stands, transfixed, staring at the door, and the knock comes again, the banging of a fist against the metal. There's no way out of here.

“Jensen,” he hears, dim shout making its way through the sound-protection. “I know you're in there. Let me in.”

The surveillor on the door shows a familiar figure.

What the fuck.

Jensen contemplates just waiting until Jared goes, but he already gets the feeling that lack of persistence is not one of Jared's weak points. He's flown with him. He _knows_.

“How did you know where to find me?” he asks, opening the door, and standing aside to let Jared in.

“I suspect you don't quite know who you're dealing with,” Jared says, walking into the apartment. 

He's Jensen's first visitor in three years of ownership. It's strange to have other eyes there, undressing his private life. Jared's tall, and takes up space, an anomalous object in Jensen's carefully constructed, scrupulously neat, apartment. Jared looks around, sees everything. 

Jared runs a hand over the small bookcase, takes an antique paperback off the shelf, and looks at its back cover.

It bugs Jensen how Jared's always touching things, people. 

“Very analogue,” he says, and grins over at Jensen, quoting Jensen's words back at him. “I didn't know you could still get these.”

Jensen takes it off him, careful not to touch hands, and slots it back in its place. It's at least a decade since the last library closed in the city, and that had seemed remarkably overdue at the time, the institution giving way to the retro-environmentalists and the educational-hygienists. Everyone reads digital now, if at all, most preferring to watch holo-stim. Jensen remembers the libraries, great barns of places lined with books. He finds it hard to imagine how much he'd enjoyed them as a child, _touching books that other people had touched_ , paying for the trolley on the way with _cash money that other people had handled_. It's better, now, cleaner, safer, but he misses the sense of possibility that always came with a trip to the library. He only gets that on-grid, now. 

The books are black-market. _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_ , _Moby Dick_ , _True Grit_. There's no way he could have afforded them legally.

“No one knows I live here,” Jensen says. “Beth didn't. Not even Chris. Not even my landlord, actually. At least, she knows I live here. But not who I am.”

Jared smiles, a secret little smile. “I have my ways and means.” He looks around. “This isn't what I would have expected.”

Jensen knows what he means. Apart from the port in the wall, it doesn't look like a hacker's place. It's almost resolutely old-fashioned. The walls are painted shades of soft green. There's a peace lily – a real, live one – in a blue glaze pot. The books. The window looks out on a peaceful lake scene with snow-topped mountains in the background. That's not real, obviously, it's Wyoming circa 2019. Jensen's created every aspect of the apartment, as carefully as any virtual environment he's ever made, as any virtual landscape he's flown over. He hates to think what Jared makes of it, what he can learn about Jensen here in his private place.

“I saw Beth, today,” he says, as a diversion.

Jared doesn't say anything. 

Suddenly, irrationally, Jensen's certain that he knew that piece of information already.

“You've been following me,” he says, and Jared stills, just for a nanosecond, but Jensen's flown with him. He knows what he's looking for. 

“You followed me,” he repeats.

“Not exactly,” Jared says. “You used your creditlink to take the trolley to St Anna's. You stayed maybe half an hour, then caught it back again. You stopped at the grocery and brought a bottle of Alpine and two six-packs of beer. Are you going to offer me one?”

Jensen sits forward, heart thumping. It's not like it's a secret, but it's unnerving. He survives by traveling under the radar. There's no alternative to using his creditlink, though. Even if it is routed through a handful of servers.

“Help yourself,” he says, with an effort at composure.

Jared gets to his feet, and walks through to the kitchen, gets a couple of bottles and sits down again, this time on the arm of the chair, stretching his long legs in front of him.

“You shouldn't drink alone,” he says, handing the cool bottle towards Jensen, like this is his house. Like it's his right to look at Jensen like he knows exactly what's going on in Jensen's head. He doesn't. No one does. Jensen doesn't move until Jared puts the bottle on the table, then he reaches over to pick it up.

It's Happoushu Lite. All the beers these days taste the same, unless you're paying premium for real, and Jensen chose it because he likes the dark green glass, the tiny flag of the Nipponesian protectorate on the neck. He sips carefully, a bitter chemical tang against his tongue. He peels at the label. It gives him something to do with his hands. Jared in the Real is hard to take.

“I think we should go in again, together,” Jared says.

“No,” Jensen replies. It's reflex. 

There's a silence. He can feel Jared watching him.

“I understand you're grieving,” Jared says, after a minute. 

“You understand nothing,” Jensen says. He tilts his head back, and drains half the beer, feels the tingle of alcohol, nothing like the Zone, not really, but he can see why so many ex-flyers hit the bottle. It numbs the place in his mind that misses the Zone when he's off-matrix, in the Real. It makes it easier to ignore Jared in his apartment. Making requests that Jensen shouldn't find so attractive.

Jared tries again.

“You've had a partner: two, even, who you could trust with your life, and now you have to advertise around and so on. I've always worked alone – always. Yesterday, when we flew together. It isn't normally that good for me.” 

Jensen thinks Jared wants him to respond _me neither_ , but he keeps stubbornly silent, even though it would be true. Flying with Jared in the Zone was like coming home after a long journey and meeting an old friend at the door. Jensen refuses to give into that. He doesn't deserve it. It's too soon. It's too risky.

“You want to end up like Beth?” he says, gently. “Beth's as good as dead. She might learn to talk again, to walk, but she'll never fly. I was her navigator. She was my breaker. We were a great team. I missed something, and now she's gone.”

“Maybe,” Jared says, and there's a shadow in his eyes that Jensen can't interpret. 

“Her doctor says...”

“Her doctor says what all the doctors say. Acute Virtual Exstasia, or whatever buzz they've got going for it.”

Jensen stands up. “Look, Jared,” he says. “I don't know what you think you...”

“What if they're still in there?” Jared says, leaning forward. 

Jensen can't answer that. That's crazy talk.

“The lost flyers,” Jared says. “Beth, the others, that guy from South Street who broke the Inter-Tel firewall last year.”

“Ronnie Cheevers,” Jensen supplies. “That's insane.”

“How do you think A.V.E works, Jensen? What did that expensive doctor over at St Anne's tell you?”

“Nobody knows,” Jensen says. “He said that nobody knows.”

Jared leans forward. “Maybe nobody knows because nobody cares to know. What is the Zone, apart from a whole lot of programming? Zeros and Ones. What are flyers?”

“We negotiate the programmes,” Jensen says, cautiously. “Via implanted mech in our brains.” 

“Mech, and drugtech,” Jared says. “We go in, we do our thing, and the trackers pull us out. It's simple enough, Jensen. Before this last year, how many flyers did you know who got burned doing it?”

“Chris had a bad run,” Jensen said. “But we pulled him out.”

“He was too damaged to go in again?” Jared asks.

Jensen shakes his head. Chris had lost the desire for it. That was a more common story, before. Flyers got old. Got tired. Retired. 

“They're not fried,” Jared says. “They're not dead. They're just haven't returned. Or, something's happened and their trackers can't pull them out.”

“She disappeared,” Jensen says, sick to his stomach at the memory. The mirror reaching out, sucking her in, dissolving her to nothing.

“No,” Jared says. “Her 'tar disappeared. You couldn't see her. Chris couldn't see her. But she wasn't in her body. So _she must still be in there_.”

“That's impossible,” Jensen says.

“Dude, what we do is impossible. We do... eight impossible things before breakfast. Every day. And...nineteen after lunch.”

Jensen's finished his beer. He plonks it down on the table.

“How would we even start to find her,” he asks, and Jared grins big, and Jensen knows he's made a tactical error, that he's committed to something he doesn't believe in, not fully. But imagine it. If only. If only. 

“Someone's doing it,” Jared says, and Jensen can't even begin to get his head around that.

“Who?” he asks, and Jared shrugs. 

“We're just going to have to find out,” he answers, and Jensen understands what it is he's committed to. They're working together. They're a team. They'll go inZone together, again. 

“I tried to lose you, yesterday, ” Jensen says, throat suddenly dry.

“I know,” Jared says, and smiles, blindingly. “I figured you would. But you didn't. I never flew with anyone like that before. I'm no navigator. I'm not even a top-rank breaker. But it was like I knew you. I knew where you were going, before you even started going there.”

Jensen clutches the bottle of beer between his hands. It's a risk that he's not sure he's willing to take. He doesn't believe there's any chance of saving Beth, of retrieving her consciousness from wherever it's lost. And even if there was. Jared's dangerous to him, with his smiling eyes and his stubbornness. He's already got closer to Jensen than anyone has in years. Flying together. Sharing beers in Jensen's apartment of all places. He doesn't know where they're going but these things never end well. Look at Beth.

Beth.

“Okay,” Jensen says, after a minute. There's no logic to his decision. The math doesn't compute, but he doesn't care.

“What?” Jared looks taken aback, all of a sudden. He didn't expect Jensen to agree, or at least, not so easily, Jensen's pretty sure. 

Jensen looks at him: Jared looks back, all eagerness and humor and conspiracy theories.

“You're good,” Jensen says, coldly. That's the only convincing rationale for this choice.

“I'm great,” Jared says, with that same shit-eating grin. Jensen couldn't design better himself. It makes him wonder how he can make Jared smile that way again. It makes him wonder – just a very little bit – what it would be like to touch that mouth with his own. He shivers. He hasn't consciously set out to touch another person in... he can't remember. It's another side of him from a lifetime ago. The one who liked the library. The one who used cash money, and didn't even mind. The one who shook hands as a mode of greeting. 

He's not sure he even wants that person back, that guy who's maybe lost deep inside himself, maybe just dissolved away, like Beth's 'tar, like all the A.V.E zombies.

Jared's up, and pacing, and Jensen watches him. Wonders if this is really real. Maybe he Zoned alongside Beth. Maybe this is all a figment, a fragment. There's a strange tightening in his chest, and Jensen wonders if that's what hope feels like.

“I found us a tracker,” Jared says. 

Jensen feels the euphoria drift away. He stands, puts his empty bottle down the dispenser, and turns, leans back against the bench-top. 

“I already work with a tracker,” he says, and Jared studies him. 

“Not from what I heard,” Jared says, and it cuts Jensen to the quick. “I think you're fooling yourself.”

“Chris'll come around,” Jensen says. There's no one closer than the folk you fly with. He knows everyone says that the cybernet age destroyed the social fabric, that there's no society at all anymore, there's only the disembodied Zone, and people jacked into it, unable to touch, but Jensen disagrees.

There's no better way of knowing someone, than seeing their chosen avatar move through a virtual space, where every detail, every feature, every gesture is consciously decided. It's the purest performance of self he knows, like seeing straight into someone else's mind, without the duplicity, without the lies.

He's a navigator, it's his job to observe 'tar language: the things about an avatar that give away the choices of its flyer. He _sees_. He's learned over time that his instincts in these matters are almost entirely correct. It's why he trusts Jared, so quickly. And it's why he knows that Chris will forgive him. He has to. They're family.

Jared's still looking at him and Jensen can see he's not convinced.

“Eight impossible things before breakfast,” he says, quietly. “Leave it to me.”

**

He meets Chris at their headquarters in the Rose Heinz building. Chris looks tired and stretched thin: he's never slept much, but he looks tired today, for the first time that Jensen remembers.

“How is she?” he asks, and Chris shakes his head.

“They're starting P.T today,” Chris says. “They move her limbs for her, to mimic walking, so her muscles won't deteriorate. They put drops in her eyes because she forgets to blink. They've put an I.V in to keep her hydrated. They feed her like a baby.”

He paces across the room, and flicks up the blind on the window. He looks out into the lowering evening, dark with smog, then pulls it down again.

“She's dead, Jensen,” Chris says. “Her body just hasn't caught up with that fact yet.”

“I need you to track me in,” Jensen says, baldly, and Chris wheels on him.

“Can't you let it go?” he asks. “Even for one week? Out of respect? Does it mean that much to you, Jensen? Get someone else.”

Jensen wishes he was the kind of person who could reach out and touch, hug or hit or hold. He's demonstrably not. 

“I talked to her doctor,” he says, instead. “And to Jared. He's got a theory about the A.V.E sufferers.”

“The Zone Zombies,” Chris says.

Jensen swallows. 

“Jared thinks Beth isn't dead. She's just lost. That all those kids. They're lost. Somehow.”

“And you're just going to look around and fish her out?”

Jensen shakes his head. 

“I'm a navigator,” he says. “I find things. Places. People. You know that, Chris. It's what I do best. I need you to send us in there. Track us."

“The Padalecki kid,” Chris says, and Jensen nods.

“Jesus, Jen, you sure about that?” Chris asks, and Jensen lets himself relax a little.

“What's the worst thing that could happen?” he says, and immediately regrets it. He watches the shutters yanked down in the window of Chris' face. 

“I lose you, like I lost Beth,” Chris says, harshly. 

“It's worth the risk,” Jensen says. “Can't you see it's worth the risk? I get lost in on-grid, you'll feel bad about it, but you'll move on. I don't mean anything, not out here. Here I'm short-sighted and lonely and Zone-fucked in the head. I hate to be touched. I wake up in the morning and I wish I was jacked in. When I'm jacked in, I want it to never end.”

“You're an addict,” Chris says. Jensen agrees, but that doesn't change anything.

“It's Beth's only chance,” he says. He knows Chris will come around in the end, because that's the truth.

 

**

“This time, try,” Jared says, and Jensen turns to face the wall. He doesn't want to say that he tried the first time, and the second, and the third.

He remembers Jared's earnest face. 

“I can find you,” he'd said, and Chris had given a disbelieving snort. Jared grinned at him.

“Jensen's the best,” Chris said. “I know you think you're hot stuff, but Jensen's more at home in the Zone than in his mamma's kitchen.”

“If you'd seen my mamma's kitchen you'd know why that's true,” Jensen says sourly.

“You won't find him,” Chris says. “No one can find him.”

Jared shrugged, but it was a fake shrug. Jensen could tell that he wasn't convinced. There's a certainty to Jared, a self-belief that astounds and scares him. Jensen doesn't believe in anything that much. Anything at all. So he's tried, and tried again, and he's not sure that why Jared can find him, except Jared can.

“Okay,” he says to Chris,” and shuts his eyes. 

There's that sway of disequilibrium, shudder right through every cell of him, and he's inzone. He doesn't take any time to look at his surroundings: he just flies, throws himself through a dozen connections, a dozen servers, in half as many seconds. He's made no plan of escape: he doesn't want Jared to be able to find him by trying to understand him. He wants to be random, as if someone had plucked him and kidnapped him away into nothingness. That's the point of the exercise, after all.

He flits through New Europe, and Nipponesia, through a couple of servers in the Antarctic Mine Empire, and back stateside. He's dizzy with it, the streaming of data, and comes to a stop, finally, in the virtual archive of the old National Museum. It's midday, and there are 'tars everywhere. Jensen's hiding in plain sight, this time. He follows a virtual tour of school kids in their uniform, standard-issue avatars walking in ruler- straight lines, and rests at the bridge of the Extinction Aviary. 

It's coded to look massive - larger than any space he's been in the Real – and the bridge is right in the centre, a plain metal balcony jutting out into the air above the digital replica of an extinct South American forest. 

The noise is incredible, shrieks and song and some weird primal kind of coughing, but what's also incredible is, underneath that, the silence: no holocraft, no people, no electric urban hum. Jensen lies on his belly, and lets his head emerge over the edge: a sheer drop of a hundred feet, with the canopy of the trees visible below. The birds are like living jewels, hummingbirds like tiny rubies hovering round his head, the Macaws, extravagant in blue and gold and scarlet, dipping and turning. It's maybe his favorite place, in either of the worlds.

“I'd give anything to have seen them in the Real,” a voice comes from behind him. 

“They're long gone,” Jensen replies and turns around. He's not surprised to see Jared there, sitting across the bridge with his arms crossed. 

“I know,” Jared answers. Anyone who's studied Twenty-first Century history knows that. “But it would have been cool.”

“I miss sparrows,” Jensen says. He looks down at the kaleidoscope of color below him, and thinks of little brown birds fighting over crumbs. 

“Me too,” Jared says, wistfully. “They reckon there've been some sightings, though. In the Southern States.”

“Podunk towns wanting to become tourist destinations,” Jensen dismisses. He wishes it were true.

“Maybe we should go there, for real,” Jared says. “Eat Southern food, camp out, try and see some sparrows. Make history.” Jensen thinks Jared's asking something more, but he's not prepared to see it. Not yet at least. 

Jensen blinks away, slowly this time, and waits for Jared on the street outside. 

Jared is there before Jensen even catches his breath. It's unprecedented.

“How the hell do you do that?” Jensen asks.

Jared gives that grin that's almost a perfect reflection of his real one, and shrugs. 

“I don't know,” he says. And shakes his head, disbelievingly. “Really, I don't.”

Jensen flys off again, comes to rest on the roof of a building nearby.

“Me neither,” he says, when Jared snaps into focus next to him. “It's kind of creepy.” 

Jared reaches out, cautiously, and touches Jensen on the arm. It's not a real touch, not here, and Jensen allows it. 

“It's still a risk, what we're planning,” Jared says. “What if I fail? What if I can't find you? What if Beth and the others are dead, after all, not missing but gone?”

“It won't be your fault,” Jensen dismisses. “We both know the risks.”

“What if I'm not prepared to take that risk,” Jared says. Both his hands are on Jensen's biceps now, and he gives him a little shake.

Jensen holds still.

“I'm going to try, with or without you,” he says. “I need to find Beth.”

“Or die trying,” Jared says, frustrated.

“I have to try,” Jensen says. “I owe it to her.” If he were the sort of person to touch, he'd reach out now, and touch Jared's face. He'd try and smooth the crease from Jared's forehead, a Realworld gesture that might convey his gratitude. He thinks he still would like to see what Jared's mouth feels like, but the gaping divide between what he thinks he might like and what he thinks he's capable of has never felt so huge.

Jared stays silent, and when he lets Jensen's arms go, Jensen regrets the loss of it keenly. 

“Thank you,” he says, and Jared looks a little sad.

They jack out together, and Chris looks at them expectantly. 

Jensen sits up, feels the weight of his Real body, rubs the blear from his Real eyes.

“We're ready,” he says.

**

Playing bait isn't easy. 

The first day, Jared and Jensen rip off seven banks for more than three hundred kay apiece. They're deliberately indiscriminate. Jensen chooses haphardly, and Jared breaks the firewalls as if they were made of paper. 

The second day, they make over two million credits, and Jensen reckons that if their goal was to get set up for life, they'd think it a wildly successful day. 

Instead, they sit on the bunks, and Chris logs off the computer, and they look at each other despairingly.

“Maybe we're going about it the wrong way,” Jared says.

“Maybe it's not going to work,” Chris says. He's pale, with bags under his eyes. He's been up all night with Beth, Jensen thinks. With Beth's body, he amends. He has to believe that the important part of Beth, her consciousness, her agency, is still inzone. And he'll find her. He's the best navigator in the business. He has to find her.

“Tomorrow, we'll do it,” he says, with more confidence than he feels.

**

At home, his apartment seems bare and lonely. It's a strange sensation.

A knock comes a couple of hours later, and he doesn't need to look at the surveillor to know who it is. Jared's the one who can always find him, no matter what.

He's wet from the rain, but it doesn't dim his smile as he holds out a bottle of Alpine and a carry bag. Jensen takes them carefully, puts the bottle on the table, and unfolds the opening of the bag. 

The apples inside are small and green, and Jensen knows they'll be hard, and crisp, and sour to the taste. Organic fruit is as rare as mined diamonds, and possibly more precious. He turns one over in his fingers: there's no date stamp, no barcode, not even a sticker. 

He doesn't know what to say.

“Where did you...” he begins and Jared shakes his head minutely. His eyes glint with amusement, and Jensen just stares at the apple in his hand. It's the best gift anyone's ever brought him. 

The slide of his teeth over the smooth skin is almost unpleasant, and then his teeth grip in and break through to the sharp,tart juice within. He chews, and his head is filled with the sound of the flesh crunching. He winces a little with the intensity of it, the sour sending a little shudder down his spine. It's Real: almost painfully so.

He swallows, breathes, runs his tongue over his teeth to chase the last remnant of skin.

Jared's watching him, intent with concentration, and before he really thinks about it, Jensen holds out the apple to him. Jared takes it, and he's careful not to touch fingers, and when did that become something to regret as a missed opportunity rather than something to appreciate as a thoughtful gesture? 

Jared takes a small bite, and Jensen watches as the line of Jared's teeth eclipses his own. Jared chews, swallows, and Jensen tracks the movement of his throat, sees the pulse there, and he looks up to see Jared watching him watch. 

The look in Jared's eyes makes his heart thump in his chest, and it's uncomfortable, the reminder of the body that won't be ignored, the sweat on his palms, the breath in his lungs coming awkwardly and fast. It's not entirely bad. It's just unsettling. 

It's more so when Jared reaches out, deliberately, carefully, and takes his hand. It feels like the moment of first landing inZone, when the brain scurries to work out which way is up. 

They stand together, a long moment, and Jensen can feel Jared's warmth on his gloved palm, and he tightens his grip, just a little, experimenting with the feel of it. It's not the same as a virtual touch. It's ungainly; it has to be negotiated. He twists a little, and their hands lock together. Jared's hands are bigger than his, but not by much. 

He doesn't hate it. He maybe likes it quite a lot.

Jared leans in, slowly, carefully signalling his intent, and Jensen's not ready for that, not yet.

“Don't,” he says. 

Jared stops, immediately, face falling just a little, and Jensen rallies, and leans in, meets Jared's mouth with his own. It's not terrible. He can feel Jared's little huff of breath, and then there's that negotiation again, slight slip and slide, and then it's just right. Jared's mouth is large and mobile under his, patient and enticing, and Jensen leans into it, lets himself go. He can taste rainwater, and sour apple, and toothpaste, and _mouth_.

Jared touches his hair, the blade of his cheekbone, the line of his jaw. Draws him in closer, wraps him in his arms, holds him. Jensen holds him back. When, finally, they draw back, it's at the same moment of mutual agreement, and if Jensen takes a step back, it's only to give himself room to breathe, time to think.

Jensen can feel every part of his body, his skin tingling, his heart dancing in his chest. He feels alive. He feels _real_.

He lifts the apple to his mouth, and takes another bite.

**

He's distracted, the next day, but the memory of Jared's mouth, the taste of it, the feel of it. The drop in his stomach when he felt Jared's tongue. The way Jared's hands curved on the wings of his back and held him still.

Maybe the distraction is a good thing. Maybe not. 

He's certainly tempting bad luck, and this time, it finds him.

He lands, Jared close behind, at the security tower for an insurance firm, randomly chosen from a dozen of the same sort in the Midwest Zone.

The firewall is a mountain of glass, reflecting him back at himself. It's just as disconcerting as it was the first time, but Jensen can tell that it's not as deadly as he'd thought. The mirrors are just that: a disguise, a diversion, something to distract the attention of the flyers from what lies inside. 

He glances across at Jared, and shrugs. Jared gives him a thumbs-up signal, but Jensen knows him well enough now to sense the anxiety beneath his avatar's unflagging cheerfulness.

“Be careful,” Jared says.

“Find me,” Jensen replies, and reaches out to touch the mirror.

**

It's like falling, but he's never fallen here. He's a navigator: he always knows where he is so thoroughly and instinctively that he's forgotten what it feels like to be lost. The code screes around him, and he can't make head or tail of it. He wonders what his body is doing, back in the Real, if Chris is shaking him, like he shook Beth, trying to get him back. That's a heartening thought, in a weird way, because he's still here, he's still conscious, and while he doesn't know where he is, he's certainly not dead. At least he doesn't think he is.

He comes to rest in whiteness, a plain so blank and pure he feels like an ant standing on an old-school piece of paper. The horizon curves strangely in all directions, white and opaque, meeting a glowing, featureless, overcast sky. He walks a couple of steps, and stops. There are no landmarks. He casts no shadow. 

He is in the Zone - or some place like it - and he has no avatar. He has no mouth, no voice, no agency. It's a sudden, horrifying realisation. 

He's a ghost in the machine.

He's suddenly, acutely aware that Jared will not be able to find him. He's not anywhere, anymore. He's disconnected. 

He has a long moment of panic, his voicelessness the only thing preventing a long howl of desperation. He's saved by a memory, the sharp taste of green apple. And then the touch of Jared's hand on his neck. And then the sight of Beth, doll-like in the hospital.

The memories give him his determination back again. 

He sets an axis and moves along it. Nothing changes, and he flashes a sharp, sudden image of a hamster running on a wheel. 

He knows Jared will not find him. He hopes that Jared will come soon.

**

Jensen moves on and on, tireless and disembodied, and after a while, he stops. 

There is no sound, and yet somehow. Something. In this world of nothing, something, a tug at his consciousness, like someone calling him. 

He shouts, wordless, soundless, calls with the whole soul of him, and feels a rush of connection, as someone moves through him.

She's body-less, feature-less, voice-less, but he'd know her in any world, virtual or otherwise – he'd know her in heaven or in hell. He loves every part of her, and he recognises her instantly. There's no communication possible, but it can't be anyone else.

 _Beth_ , he thinks. 

_I knew you'd find me,_ she answers.

He concentrates as hard as he can. He remembers the heaviness of his body. The unpleasant weight of gravity, after jacking out. He remembers the icy juniper slide of Alpine in his mouth. He remembers the crush of bodies on the trolley, how close it was, how hard to move, the touches of random strangers making his skin feel as though it wanted to crawl off his body. He remembers breathing, the noisy biological wheeze of it, the ache of his chest. He remembers the long bitter sting of getting inked, the satisfaction of it, afterwards. He remembers that sour taste of green apples, still so vivid, a touch on his cheekbone, a hand at his back, centring him and making him real.

And he makes his avatar again, molecule by molecule, stealing the air and weaving it into himself, until he stands on two legs he's created, and can reach with one imperfectly formed hand to touch his hair. It's in one blue spike, like a twentieth century animation, and he thinks harder, and it becomes strands.

“Beth,” he says, and his voice has no modulation. He tries again, and it still doesn't sound right.

 _I can see you,_ she thinks, and he can feel her wonder. _You made yourself_.

“It's just a 'tar,” Jensen says. “The real me is off-grid.” He stops, and tries to think how to rephrase that. But it's true. He doesn't necessarily like it, but it's true. His body – his real body, in his real life – is lying on a bunk in an office, and Chris is monitoring his vital signs, and Jared is in another bunk opposite, and somewhere Jared's consciousness is searching for his, convinced that nothing in the Zone can keep them apart.

“I remember you,” he says to the blank desert, to the Beth he knows is hidden within it.

“I remember you dyed your hair blue the second year I knew you. I remember your face and your sweet eyes. I remember you are the toughest woman I ever met, and the gentlest. Definitely the smartest. I remember your laugh sounds goofy. I remember you have long legs and a mole on your left shoulder. I remember when you used to look at Chris your eyes would warm, even when you were mad at him. I remember you have small hands and long fingers, and you chew your nails.” 

There's a shadow at first, where there was none, and it crystallizes slowly into a rough-hewn caricature of a woman, which resolves and resolves, until it's unmistakably Beth. 

She reaches out and clutches at his hand, and he holds it, tightly, feeling his own avatar come more into focus. He touches her face, and she pixillates, and becomes herself.

She's crying and laughing at the same time. 

“There are others,” she says, and tugs at his hand, and together they run through the whiteness, casting shadows, and the landscape starts to resolve itself, pixel by pixel, wherever those shadows fall.

**

Ronnie is as annoying as Jensen remembers, but quieter. He'd forgotten that Ronnie's 'tar never stuttered. There's a Nipponesian boy who can't be more than twelve years old, and a tall, quiet African-American woman with hair the color of old autumn leaves. 

Beth doesn't leave hold of his hand, as if he might vanish away as quickly as he arrived.

With her other hand she touches the misshapen, awkward, half-remembered avatars, until they remember themselves well enough to speak and move. Jensen wonders where their bodies are, now, where they've been kept. He thinks of Chris, moving Beth's limbs, walking and talking her, keeping her alive until her return. He hopes the others have someone to care for them so devoutly.

They walk onwards into the white, leaving shadows and pencil-lines of graphic interfaces behind in their footsteps.

There are more of them, ten, and then the eleventh can't resolve herself, not at all, crying silently until they all lay their hands on her, asking her questions, one after the other _Do you remember snow? Did you ever shave your head? Tell us about your high school_ until she appears, a transparent smudge of a girl, flickering in and out of visibility.

And then, Jared is there.

He appears, in the thick of them, at least half a head taller than any of them, and so vibrantly three-dimensional that he glows. Jensen feels himself sharpen in response, and notices, half-aware, that the others do the same, as if Jared's sheer life-force reminds them of how their own might feel.

Jared's not looking at them, though. He's only looking at Jensen, and Jensen takes a staggering step and Jared hugs him tightly, and Jensen feels himself come right again, all the way.

“I thought I couldn't do it,” Jared says, so softly that only Jensen can hear him. “I thought I'd lost you.”

“I knew you'd come,” Jensen says, and realizes it's true. 

“I know the way out,” Jared replies. “We can take them home.”

Jensen looks around them. The pure white of the grid is blurred and tainted by their tracks, splashes of dull color muddying the blank slate around them. He never thought that Reality was contagious, before. 

“There's something we need to do first,” he says.

**

They leave the others in a small circle of green grass, Beth leading the others through a seemingly endless game of “Do you remember.”

Jensen leads the way, tracking through the wasteland of nothing, back in, further in, to the place where he thinks he landed. Jared follows, quick as breath, as swift in the blank landscape as anywhere in the Zone.

Jensen knows where he is, but then, he always knows. He was just confused for a while.

“Come out,” he summons. “Come out and face us.”

The white is blinding in its completeness, but Jared's there, long bangs and stupid jacket, solid and precise, the antithesis of the nothing that someone designed as this kind of purgatory for hackers. He can't imagine that that person wouldn't stick around to see what they'd done. Logically, he must still be here.

“Come out,” he says again to the blankness.

He's not sure what he's expecting, except with a certainty deep inside him, he knows that something, _someone_ is there.

The boy who appears is definitely not it, but then virtual appearances are often deceiving. It's hard to conceive the boy as an avatar, though. He's precise to the last pixel. His face is curved, hair shining, and his eyes are golden.

“We're leaving,” Jensen says. “All of us.”

The boy grins, delighted, and gives a chuckle that echoes strangely in the empty landscape around them. 

“Are you sure?” he replies. There's a small, indefinable gesture, and then there are walls around them, high as Jensen can see, concrete slabs to the end of sight. The boy raises an eyebrow, and gestures again, and the walls become fire, then curving barbed wire. And he shrugs, and they disappear.

Jensen's impressed, but not scared.

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

“Because I could,” the boy answers. He yawns, and examines his fingernails. Jensen thinks of Chris' face, looking down at Beth's body. He thinks of the others, piecing themselves together from fragments of their past, and wonders if they'll be able to make the transition home to themselves, or if they'll remain here, rats in a maze, for ever.

“We're leaving,” Jared says, from Jensen's shoulder. “And we'll find you again, next time. Anyone you take, we can bring home again. Anyone you break, we can fix.”

The boy cocks his head, and his eyes flash gold.

“If you think you can stop me,” he says, and smiles a secret little smile. “Do your best.”

He dissolves, extravagantly, into a swarm of gilded butterflies, which flutter in the shape of a human, and then disperse in every direction. Jensen bats one away from his face as it passes, but it's just a butterfly, or a representation of one, and not even so very sophisticated. As he watches, it loses all three dimensionality, turns to cellophane, and falls to the ground, like a discarded candy wrapper. And the boy is gone. 

Jensen reaches down and picks up the cellophane, and puts it in his pocket.

“Do you really believe that?” Jared says. “You think you can find him again, stop him properly?”

Jensen smiles at him. He's fiercely certain.

“ _We_ can,” he says. “We're the best there is.”

**

They fly, together, all of them, slow progress at first, each jump limited by the strength of the weakest, but they get there in the end, Jared navigating all of them back to a place that Jensen recognizes immediately. 

It's the bridge at the Extinction Aviary. There's a toucan sitting on the railing, and as they land, it flaps away. There's one more jump, and they're in a hotel room, with a shining window out over a virtual city. In the distance, Jensen can glimpse the ocean. No one ever codes it quite right; it's the one thing that never quite looks like the Real.

“You'll need to wait here,” Jared says. “Because we'll need to find you in the Real, and try and jack you in.”

The last girl, Irene, stands at the window, and presses her hands against the glass, staring hungrily out at the tiny strip of beach. Her avatar is still rudimentary, but she looks human again.

“I think I'm dead,” she says, but she gives a little smile. “I'm a Zone Zombie, right? What if my parents let me die, out there?

Jared can't answer that, and she goes back to looking at the fake ocean, the virtual clouds in the virtual sky. 

**

Jensen jacks out. 

It's not the usual instant return to his corporeal self: the weight settles on him slowly, like he's been asleep for a long time. He breathes, once, twice, re-familiarizing himself with the heaviness of it, and opens his eyes. 

Chris is staring at him, like he's a ghost come to life, which Jensen supposes he is, more or less. 

“Jensen,” Chris says, extending one hand like he has to touch to prove Jensen's alive.

He stops, just a couple of inches away, because he's Jensen's best friend, and he knows what Jensen is like. But maybe Jensen's different now. Maybe something's changed. 

Jensen reaches out his hand, and takes Chris's in his, feels the strength of it, the callouses from his guitar, the warm life of him. Chris squeezes back, very gently, his eyes on Jensen's face, intent and curious. Jensen hasn't touched Chris on purpose since before they started flying together.

Jensen grips him tight. 

“We found her,” he says, urgently. “We found Beth. She's alive.”

Jared gives a twitch in the other bunk, and sits up, pulling the jack from behind his ear. 

“We need to get her jacked in,” he says. “And then Jensen can bring her home.”

**

Later, Jensen will remember the week that follows in a series of almost disconnected images. 

Beth, sitting up in bed, and looking around for Chris. “I'm hungry,” she said, and “I missed you.”

Dr Stevens, leaning against the door jamb, nodding at Jensen with something like approval. “You decided to make things better, then,” he said. Jensen didn't answer. He watched Beth's white-knuckle grip on Chris's hands, watched her first unsteady steps on her own two feet. He's not quite sure what better is, right now.

Irene's father crying in the living room of their small suburban bungalow. Irene, slow to move, slow to talk, slurring his name from her wheelchair, patted his knee. “I'll be good as new soon,” she said. 

Ronnie Cheever's wife, Carol, taking two steps forward and slapping Ronnie hard across his face. “You bastard,” she said, “I thought you were dead,” before falling into his arms and hugging him hard.

Beth, walking down the street and holding her face up to the weak spring sun.

The disbelieving look of joy on Chris' face, every time he looked at her.

There's a shadow hanging over things for Jensen, amidst all the happy moments. He tries not to think about it, but on the day they take Irene home, he sits for hours lying on his stomach on the empty bridge at the virtual Aviary, watching the dead birds loop below him. He wonders about the sparrows in the Southern States. If people really saw them, or just dreamed them on-grid. Wonders how they could possibly know the difference.

Jared finds him, some time later.

“What's wrong?” he asks, and Jensen rolls onto his back and looks at the Zone sky above him, blue, spotted with clouds. 

“He's still out there,” Jensen says. “In here, whatever. The boy. The... stealer of souls. He's still in here.”

Jared nods and sits down next to him. 

“We can find him, again,” he says, with certainty. “If that's what you want to do.”

Jensen looks at him, and nods. He thinks they can do that, together. Find lost people, and bring them home. He knows it, deep down. Maybe that's why they fly so well together. Maybe it's just the way they're programmed. 

“I wish I knew that it was the right thing to do,” he says. “Maybe they're better off in here. Maybe we all are.”

Jared shakes his head.For the first time ever, Jared's avatar shifts in unease, and Jensen can see the pixels. Jared looks exhausted. 

“All this,” Jared says, waving his hand to encompass the jungle, the epic hall, the birds, song in motion, below them. 

“It's just data,” Jared says.

Jensen stares at him. 

“Of course it's data,” he replies. “Data is everything. It's the reality of the other world delivered in binary. One. I exist. Zero. I don't exist. Infinite variations on a theme of something and nothing. What else is there?”

Jared leans in and kisses him, suddenly, unexpectedly, and Jensen tilts his head, lets it happen.

Jared pulls back, a moment later.

“Is it really the same?” he asks, and Jensen can't answer. It's not. It's easier, symbolic and gestural in a way. He likes that Jared kissed him, but he doesn't feel dizzy, he doesn't feel his heart beating more strongly. He can't feel his heart beating at all.

Jensen jacks out, pulls the jack from its port before Chris can even stabilize him, stands up before his legs are ready and staggers almost drunkenly from the room, before Jared even wakes. He's confined by the actuality of the Real, though. He can't cut between places, he has to walk down the hallway, has to climb down the stairs, has to stop in the foyer to fasten his shoes. That's the problem with the Real. There's usually nowhere to escape to. 

Jared catches up with him on the street outside, hair flat on one side from lying still, eyes a little red and shadowed, a stubble on his jaw that wasn't there on his avatar. He smells of sweat, and sleep, and the kind of sweet musky aftershave he favors. He's so real that it aches inside Jensen in a way he can't define, keeps his breathing tripping off-beat and his heart in his mouth. 

When Jensen looks at Jared, he sees infinite possibilities. He sees chaos and emotion and randomness, utterly unpredictable through any algorithm that Jensen can imagine. 

Right now, Jared looks tense, and uncertain, and urgent, and Jensen doesn't know how to navigate that. He doesn't know how to navigate through the way Jared makes him feel.

It's all so horribly out-of-control.

“It's different,” he says, though Jared hasn't spoken. The words fumble in his mouth, too small and meagre for the emotion he's feeling. “When you kiss me out here. When we're together, out here.”

Jared relaxes a tiny bit: Jensen thinks that maybe he could learn to interpret Jared out here as well, if that's what Jared wants. 

“Better or worse?” Jared asks.

Jensen looks around him. The air is thick with smoke, and there are cars bumper to bumper. The buildings around them are scarred with neon advertisements. It's cold, even for February, and as far as the eye can see, there's nothing beautiful, except maybe the man in front of him.

He hadn't realized that one element could make that much difference. 

He leans in and touches his lips to Jared's, feels his stubble, the warm taste of him, the puff of his breath, the thump of his heart under Jensen's palm. It's overwhelming, so much to process, so much to understand, so much to _feel_.

“Better,” he says, and feels Jared's grin under his mouth, feels his own, unintended, meeting it.

That's the simple truth of it.

 

THE END.


End file.
